Posing as a TV reporter clad with body armor, Gov. JB Pritzker on Thursday mocked the Trump administrative narrative that National Guard troops are needed to quell chaos in “war-torn Chicago” in a bit for ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
Kimmel has been asking viewers to send in videos with #showmeyourhellhole in cities where President Donald Trump has deployed National Guard members, including Portland and Washington D.C. On Thursday night, he turned to a “very special report” filed by Pritzker.
“This is JB Pritzker, reporting from war-torn Chicago. As you can see, there’s utter mayhem and chaos on the ground. It’s quite disturbing,” he says while walking on a downtown Chicago bridge. “The Milwaukee Brewers have come in to attack our Chicago Cubs.
“We’ve seen people being forced to eat hot dogs with ketchup on them, and our deep dish pizza, well, has gone shallow. So it’s a challenge to survive here in the city of Chicago, but there’s no hellscape that I’d rather be in,” Pritzker says.
Reporting live from Chicago, there’s no “hellscape” I’d rather be in. pic.twitter.com/1pNtb29d4R
— Governor JB Pritzker (@GovPritzker) October 10, 2025
The governor filmed the video near the Monroe Street Bridge on Thursday afternoon around 4 p.m., as proceedings were underway at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse in the lawsuit filed by Illinois and Chicago against the Trump administration’s plans to deploy the National Guard.
U.S. District Judge April Perry later blocked the Trump administration from “ordering the federalization and deployment of the National Guard of the United States within Illinois” for two weeks.
Onlookers stopped the governor as he filmed the scene, including a former Illinois National Guard member.
“Well I’m glad you’re not getting deployed now,” Pritzker told the man. “Yeah. Here or anywhere,” he said.
About 200 troops from Texas and 14 from California began arriving in the Chicago area earlier this week, joining about 300 federalized Illinois National Guard troops. Texas National Guard members were spotted Thursday morning at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview.
Speaking to reporters last month, Trump called Pritzker and California Gov. Gavin Newsom “the two worst and most naive” governors in the country and once again falsely compared crime in Chicago to that of Afghanistan.
“There’s no place in the world, including you can go to Afghanistan. You can go to places that you would think of. They don’t even come close to this,” Trump said. “Chicago is a hellhole right now. Baltimore is a hellhole right now.”
Trump was referencing the Labor Day weekend, which saw 9 people killed and 52 wounded. But overall, violent crime has trended down in the city. Chicago has seen a 32% decline in homicides, a nearly 33% decline in robberies and a 36% decline in shootings this year compared with 2024, according to Chicago police data. The holiday weekend, though, was more on par with a peak of violence seen in 2021 and 2022.
Trump began threatening to send the National Guard to Chicago in August to control what he described as “out of control” crime in the city.
Pritzker is appearing on the late night circuit more frequently this year, including in a May Kimmel appearance on the heels of an attention-getting political speech in New Hampshire that sparked 2028 presidential run buzz.
And in an August appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” Pritzker joked that he was “OK” being a billionaire and takes pride in bucking a tradition of Illinois governors doing prison time.